Realising that Pakistan's obduracy is obstructing the progress of eight-nation South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) grouping, prime minister Narendra Modi has quietly pulled a diplomatic coup by convincing three-member countries to form a sub-regional alliance to purse an agenda of development and connectivity.
In order to make Pakistan irrelevant in the regional grouping, which has been halting several initiatives, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal have come together to form a joint working group. Though, the idea had been conceived in 2013, it got a fillip last November, when Modi participated in the 18th SAARC summit in Kathmandu. Without naming Pakistan, he spoke about pro-active measures taken by India but expressed pessimism that groping has not stood to its potential.
What are the benefits of sub-regional grouping?
Security experts have been asking India to use its geography and create sub-regional platforms of cooperation to circumvent Islamabad's opposition to several trade-related initiatives. There are now moves to set up similar groups with Sri Lanka and Maldives in the South to realise the potential of SAARC, whose intra-nation trade so far accounts a little over just 1% of SAARC's GDP. In contrast, in ASEAN, smaller than SAARC in terms of size of economy, the intra-bloc trade stands at 10% of its GDP. Officials here concede that making a platform with Afghanistan will be difficult because, it doesn't have borders with India.
Why is Pakistan holding back the SAARC?
The squabbling between India and Pakistan has held back SAARC for years, with the two sides' disagreements preventing progress in the consensus-based grouping.Despite a free trade pact in force since 2006, high tariffs and restrictions on movement mean trade among South Asian nations makes up just five percent of their total trade. At the last SAARC Summit, only one agreement on energy cooperation could be signed due to Pakistan's opposition to other planned deals for greater road and rail connectivity.
What was decided at the latest BBIN meeting?
Last week, India hosted such sub-regional meeting inviting officials from Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal to discuss issues related to water resources management, power, generation of hydropower and on to ensure connectivity and transit facilities within the region. The sub-grouping named as BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal) agreed to work out a model for power trade and inter-grid connectivity between the four countries. Officials at the ministry of external affairs said the representatives of these nations also agreed to exchange lists of potential future hydropower/power projects to be undertaken jointly on equitable basis.
Significantly, on the issue of connectivity and transit, decided to prepare agreements to enable movement of motor vehicles and railways. "The meeting exchanged ideas on potential cargo (both roads and railways) and bus routes, involving at least three countries in addition to the existing bilateral routes and also agreed to share suggestions in this regard. It was also decided to explore the possibility of using multi-modal transport to meet commercial as well as tourist needs," the MEA officials said. The progress will be reviewed now in Bangladesh in the second half of 2015.
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